


Frailties

by x_los



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-17
Updated: 2008-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>H/C with a touch of angst, a dash of crack, and one v. obsessive, lightly concussed Master.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frailties

Title: Frailties  
Author: [](http://x-los.livejournal.com/profile)[**x_los**](http://x-los.livejournal.com/)  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairing: Five/Ainley!Master  
Summary: H/C with a touch of angst, a dash of crack, and one v. obsessive, lightly concussed Master.  
Beta: [](http://aralias.livejournal.com/profile)[**aralias**](http://aralias.livejournal.com/) , who continues to mock my Random!Commas of War.  
A/N: edited request for [](http://best-enemies.livejournal.com/profile)[**best_enemies**](http://best-enemies.livejournal.com/) [Anon Meme](http://community.livejournal.com/best_enemies/13938.html): if you'd like, here's the [original version.](http://community.livejournal.com/best_enemies/13938.html?thread=186226#t186226)

 

 

A skull is a frail, ridiculous case for a Time Lord’s mind, the power of which seems incongruous with the inherent limitation of that slight cage of bone.

 

The Master nurses his head in supreme frustration. The Doctor sits opposite him, leaning against the rock wall that frames two sides of the clearing. He is unabashedly observing the Master with an arm draped over his knee. The Doctor’s expression is closed, but his smooth brow is somewhat tighter than it normally is, which tells the Master that the Doctor’s worried. Even the Doctor’s ridiculously floppy hair looks dejected, sticking to the sides of his pale face in the jungle’s humidity.

 

“You should rest,” the Doctor offers, tone sporting. Polite. Distant. The Master would get up and smack him for it if he wouldn’t dizzy himself to the point of confusion in the effort.

 

“Why _yes_ , Doctor, that is basic treatment for a concussion. How very kind of you to point that out.” The Master’s mock-friendly smile has a vicious glint to it. “If only you’d been equally observant when I was being coshed on the back of my skull by that soldier—we might be in our respective TARDISs and well away from here by now, rather than contemplating recovery periods and possible sources of shelter for the night.”

 

The Doctor winces slightly. “It’s not as if I’m responsible for this, you know. I’m as much in the dark as you are about why they’ve lured us here. But pacing is only going to aggravate your headache. You really should lie down.”

  
“Can’t bear to witness a little pain?” the Master sneers. “How very unsurprising. _Poor_ Doctor. Why don’t you just make for your preposterous TARDIS, where you won’t be discomforted by the sight of suffering?”

 

“I’m not leaving you here, so you can stop trying to annoy me into letting you alone.” The Doctor’s calm is blunt and startlingly reassuring, “We’re getting off this planet together or not at all.”

 

The Master doesn’t have a cutting response to that, and pacing _is_ making him queasy. After a moment, he sits, carefully positioned to face the Doctor on the other side of the irregular space, back to the rock wall (Omega knows what kind of fauna lurk on this planet. He’s certainly not turning his back on that jungle).

 

Less than comfortable, he shifts against the rock face. A sudden wave of pain swamps him the instant he tries it, as if it had just been lying in wait for that opening. The Master has to fight to swallow a harsh gasp. He thinks he’s managed to keep his face blank, but a quick glance at the Doctor’s too-sympathetic expression assures him otherwise.

 

“Can you take some water?” the Doctor asks, pulling a flask from somewhere in his tapered cricketer’s jacket.

 

The stomach is an idiotic thing that turns itself inside out because the head is harmed, though it needn’t. Though it doesn’t serve any purpose.

 

“No,” the Master admits after a very long pause, “I don’t think I could.”

 

A moment of silence, and he can _feel_ the Doctor stand on the other side of the clearing. If he were well he would be pressing into the Doctor’s space, twisting their conversation into some dazzling figure of eight, toying with him, offering a world of unstated possibilities. But here he is, alone with the Doctor in the woods, and all he can do is nurse his injuries. What a ludicrous waste of a perfectly good opportunity.

 

The Doctor sits down level with his face, all Wedgwood-blue-eyed sympathy. His hand reaches out tentatively towards the Master’s temple, like the shy stretching investigation of a cat meeting a stranger.

 

“I could try and make it a bit better for you,” his former best friend (who was never anything more than that, who’d driven Koschei to distraction in their youth and never considered the jokes everyone made about them being a couple anything more than a lark—not even when Koschei had blushed furiously and threatened dire consequences if the wits in question didn’t all shut up—and who doesn’t get it even now, with an insulting, persistent obliviousness) offers. Solely out of a bland sense of kindness. It makes the Master want to kill things.

 

Grudgingly, the Master nods.

 

Skin is simple. Like an old man, it remembers its childhood better than its present. Its tastes are confirmed—it knows what it likes, sticks to it without deviation. A regenerated Time Lord’s virgin skin learns its history. The Master has taught this Trakenite body centuries. He gave his new form the glare of two suns in high summer and the exquisite agony of burning through regeneration. The body processed the ache of warping in a black hole, and the soft thrill of Theta’s hands demonstrating his limited affection with limited, purely friendly physicality.

 

He’d given it the youthful impressions of his own hands moving over his cock, alone in their shared room with the door locked while Theta was in class. Of frantically pumping his erection just to get rid it, all because Theta—upset about a fight with his parents over his consistently low marks—had embraced him too tightly before leaving. He had been sick, hadn’t he, for manipulating the touch into something he could use? Sick for encouraging the other boy, for subtly pressing Theta’s body harder into his own. Sicker still for making sympathetic little noises when he’d really wanted to shove his best friend to the ground and take him—Theta would have forgotten all about the fight then, wouldn’t he? This new body, that had never even been that guilty, flustered, desperately enraptured boy, remembered how it felt to be flush with desire and shame and self-loathing all at once.

 

The Master might not have wanted his skin thus educated. He might have wanted to forget, to be free of his long-abandoned home planet, of memories better forgotten, of the ancient contact-high from Theta’s passionless, chaste touch. But he hadn’t had been offered a choice.

 

The Doctor puts his hands on the Master’s temples and rubs softly, alleviating the tension, releasing the pressure. The Master doesn’t let himself swallow, doesn’t let his breathing change. But his skin knows what it’s supposed to do. All it understands is Theta touching him, and it sings where the Doctor’s fingertips lie. It knows there is nothing in the universe it prefers to this.

 

 _If you had the slightest idea, how very fast you’d snatch your hands back,_ the Master thinks, letting the slightest smirk play over his face.

 

“Something funny?” the Doctor asks, voice low, intent, concentrating on what he’s doing.

 

“This entire day has an element of the comedic about it,” the Master says, evading the question, leaning into the touch in a completely understandable manner. He is in pain and the Doctor is soothing it away. That’s all. Though perhaps he won’t mention that his headache is largely gone now. “You acting as my Doctor—that’s amusing enough.”

 

The Doctor smiles. “Shush, I’ll have you know I’m perfectly qualified.” His fingers work through the Master’s swept-back hair, seeking the site of the injury.

 

Hearts are dumb animals. They’re incapable of learning commands. Even dogs manage that. They don’t understand that they shouldn’t beat faster when there are no correspondingly rapid beats to match them. That they should cool if there’s no heat to mirror them. They won’t be told to stop wanting where they aren’t wanted. Senseless speeding up just from _seeing_ him even centuries after the Master had told himself to forget the whole thing. After centuries of repeating it to himself in the interim every time his advances were refused.

 

Even losing one of his hearts has done nothing to still its brother. The Master wishes he’d not been born with two. Then he could feel as weakly and impermanently as the Doctor’s humans must. Those flighty beings who can leave what the Master so covets with little more than a pang, and go on to live out their insignificant scrap of life contentedly after the Doctor’s moved along, forgotten them. Failing that, the Master wishes he’d shed both hearts somewhere along the way.

 

“Feel up to walking now?” the Doctor asks, pleasantly. Always pleasant. Infuriatingly _pleasant_.

 

“No. Not quite yet, Doctor,” the Master says, which is a lie, because he feels capable not just walking, but of punching the Doctor in the face for managing to dodge every trap and every obvious hint alike. He feels capable of reaching into the pale pile of the Doctor’s hair and finally figuring out whether the incredibly tempting mass feels as soft as it looks. He feels up to informing the Doctor calmly that a kiss actually would make it better and then pulling the Doctor down and dosing himself while the Doctor is inevitably too shocked to move, let alone administer the medicine.

 

In short, he could easily walk now. But the Doctor’s gaze is nearly tender on his face, almost devoted. His hands stroke the Master’s arms through the velvet pile of the jacket as he mutters something the Master pays no attention to about getting this dratted heavy thing off to give him some air. Those same caring hands make darting returns to the Master’s face to check his temperature, and slink through the Master’s hair, with soothing motions feebly disguised as something to do with examining the bump, so as not to offend his dignity by offering simple physical comfort. The Doctor’s touch is still passionless and chaste and _limited_ , but it’s more than the Master’s had from him in centuries. He’d never imagined he’d come to crave this taunting, half-measure parody of what he wants as deeply as he has.

 

The Master is perfectly content to drag this out for a good long while. It’s perhaps the closest he’ll ever get to what he wants, so he can’t afford not to. The Doctor is fantastic—age hasn’t withered, or custom staled his infinite variety, no matter how the Master might wish otherwise—but he’s never going to understand. And not from dullness or mischance, but because he simply doesn’t want to see it. And what’s a concussion in the face of that injury?

 

If the Master luxuriates in the feel of the Doctor pushing the jacket off his shoulders, gently bearing him down to the ground, insisting that he sleep, offering to watch over him, it is only because his only other valid response is to scream, or cry, and he isn’t much for histrionics. Instead, the Master smirks to himself. He’s nearly a carrion bird. Reduced to simply taking advantage of the opportunities that avail themselves to him.

 

“My condition could change, you’ll have to monitor it,” he reminds the Doctor, who nods and stays close, holding the Master’s hand while pretending that it’s necessary to note the pulse, slightly shocked to discover it elevated.

 

Blood is always telling. Most species that possess it use blood to determine the pathologies of the entire body. They enshrine blood as the symbol of vitality. They call on its semantic power to describe the pure, essential properties of things—bloodline, bloodlust, bloodguilt. If the Doctor was the slightest bit willing to acknowledge ugly truths, he couldn’t help but understand the blatant meaning in the Master’s quickened radial pulse.

 

“You should be under observation for a few hours, at least.” The Doctor runs his touch over the Master’s pulse point at the inside of the Master’s wrist and takes the immediate jump under the pad of his thumb simply as confirmation of a noted symptom.

 

“A pity—I deplore this inactivity. But since you feel it’s necessary.” The Master settles in on the ground with played up discomfort, winces theatrically and clears his throat, as if he loathes asking: “could you—”

 

The Doctor obligingly lifts the Master’s head into his inviting, striped lap and begins massaging again with his long, elegant fingers.

 

“Thank you,” the Master says, just to throw him.

 

The Doctor’s hands still, surprised, and the Master knows there’s no medical excuse for taking advantage of that to suck the nearest dangling index finger hovering over his mouth. There’s no possible excuse to lathe that finger with his tongue. And so he doesn’t. But he wagers he could get the Doctor to moan before he snatched his hands away in flustered horror and dumped the Master on the ground. The Master bets he’d love the sound, but he knows he’d hate the look that would follow.

 

“You’re welcome.” The Doctor sounds guardedly touched. Begins moving those delightful hands again.

 

The Master didn’t expect such positive results. There must be a whole array of excuses to get more of such attention with both plausible deniability and his dignity intact **.** At the least it bears thinking about **.** It’s only right that he take advantage of the Doctor’s vast reserves of wretched, impersonal sympathy. The Master, bitter, hopeful and opportunistic, ponders the possibilities even as he enjoys the contact. If this is where a mere concussion gets him, he’s going to have to give attaining and ‘accidentally’ dropping a container of Beluszian sex pollen serious thought.


End file.
